Reordering safari tabs in iPadOS 26

I am having difficulty re-ordering Safari tabs on a ninth generation iPad running iPadOS 26.2.

When I attempt using what worked in prior versions of iPadOS (long push the tab I wish to move and drag it to the left or right to the desired location) I see the tabs part to make a space to drop it but when I release my finger, the tab I am trying to move goes back to the initial location.

In looking online, I saw repeated references to this issue together with a suggestion that instead of trying to re-order the tabs the old way, one should push the tab (overlapping squares) button, which as expected takes me to a new screen that shows all the open tabs, and then reorder the tabs from there by Long pushing the tab I wish to move and then drag it between the tabs where I wanted to be. That doesn't seem to work either.

Any thoughts about how to get back this very fundamental feature would be appreciated.